Politics can make a difference. And it all starts with ideas. Some ideas are more universal and meaningful than others. My children are the center of my world—and when I think about the issues facing our nation right now, I think about what that means for our girls, and the world that we’re leaving for…
Some figures… CBS News commissioned the same group to analyze the crowd size at the Stewart-Colbert rally it used to estimate the crowd at Glenn Beck’s August rally. The CBS numbers: Beck drew 87,000 people to his rally, Stewart and Colbert drew 215,000. Excerpt from: Just How Big Was The Stewart-Colbert Rally? | TPMDC Plus…
These are scary times, there is no doubt. but I hope in the end people focus on what we can accomplish, not just what we fear. Bill Clinton recently put it well… Clinton exhorted the crowd to “keep on being mad. But concentrate your anger so that it clarifies your judgment instead of clouding it.…
I’m backing California Proposition 19, even though I’m personally disinterested in marijuana. Paul Buchheit makes the argument beautifully, so I thought I would share. Not only is prohibition an attack on our basic right to control our own bodies and minds (a philosophical point which most people probably don’t care about), but prohibition also provides a…
I was lucky – I had several. Not all of them were perfect, but each was perfect for me. They made a difference for lots of kids, and for me, they made all the difference. I was never an easy kid to teach. I was called precocious, which I think was a nice way of…
I grumbled a bit to myself when I saw the Mint infographic on the “Economic Impact of Immigration”, but didn’t bother to take it any further. I’m happy to read that Aaron Patzer, the founder of Mint, saw the problem and has taken steps to correct it. Fortune Tech reprinted his email in their coverage:…
Great quote from Jeff Bezos on the connection between great products and meaning: I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You…
Importance of “filters” has been over-stated. As my friend John Pederson puts it: Managing your own filter is critical. The other kind of filter that lets things in vs. preventing things from coming in.[From Dean Shareski on attention.] A filter is a screen that keeps things out. My information problem isn’t solved by keeping things…
The Wall Street Journal has video of Steve Jobs’ opening remarks at the Apple event last week. It was his first official public appearance since going on medical leave several months ago, during which he had a liver transplant. It’s good to see such an open and human appeal from a prominent figure. I applaud…
These conversations happen in the pub, in the bleachers of our kids soccer games, and just about everwhere. We’re all having public conversations all the time, where the only privacy is that of proximity – you really don’t know who that is sitting at the next table, and usually you really don’t care. Now many of those conversations have moved to Twitter, or Facebook, or your blog. Some of those are open conversations that are easily found, searched, and aggregated and some aren’t.